The Evolution of Player’s Distance Irons

If you like to think that innovation in golf equipment is dead and all this technology OEMs tout is just marketing BS, the player’s distance iron category would like a word.

Player’s distance irons have only really been a thing since 2018. It used to be that if you wanted distance and forgiveness in an iron, you had the game-improvement category.  If you wanted precision and workability, you had the player’s iron category of forged blades and cavity-backs.

That left a rather sizable gap in between and if there’s one thing that nature (not to mention industry) hates, it’s a gap.

The evolution of player’s distance irons doesn’t follow the strict tenets of Darwinism but it is a fascinating study. Seven years ago, it simply didn’t exist outside of a few misfit clubs erroneously categorized as game improvement. But thanks to advances in design technology and manufacturing capabilities, the player’s distance iron is arguably the most tech-driven equipment category in the game.

And one of the leaders in that category might surprise you.

The Evolution of Player’s Distance Irons: The Genesis

A decade ago, we started seeing shifts in OEM offerings. Irons such as the Srixon Z 565 and the Mizuno JPX 900 Forged were technically in the game-improvement category but neither really fit. They had a smaller profile, less offset, thinner toplines and, surprisingly, slightly weaker lofts than normal GI clubs.  

OEMs were also using new materials and new manufacturing technology to make these clubs. They were multi-material construction, often of hollow-body design. That allowed OEMs to design extremely thin and extremely flexible faces to maximize ball speed. Slightly larger heads allowed for lower CGs which added forgiveness.

Say this about OEMs: they can read demographic charts. What those charts showed was an aging population of “better players” who still had plenty of game. The problem those aging players faced was, well, aging. Father Time comes for your distance first.

After years of gaming blades or cavity-backs, they knew what an iron should look like. They weren’t about to go game improvement: they wanted something that looked, felt and sounded like a player’s iron but with just enough extra distance and forgiveness baked in.

Sounds an awful lot like what we now call a player’s distance iron, doesn’t it?

What followed was a perfect confluence of circumstances. Aging golfers needed something that didn’t exist and OEMs,. with advances in materials, design and manufacturing, were Johnnie-on-the-spot to fill that gap.

And thus the player’s distance category was born.

Wilson Golf: A Surprising Leader

 One of the early leaders in player’s distance technology was – surprise, surprise – Wilson Golf.

In MyGolfSpy’s first Player’s Distance Iron test in 2018, the Wilson C300 Forged placed fourth overall. It finished right on the tail of the iron many consider the standard in the player’s distance category, the TaylorMade P790. A year later, the now two-year-old C300 Forged finished fourth again, behind the Mizuno JPX 919 Forged, a new P790 and the COBRA KING Forged Tec.

Wilson won it all in 2020 with the new D7 Forged beating all comers. In 2022, the new Wilson D9 Forged finished a strong second overall. Wilson didn’t have anything new to enter last year but this year we do expect the new Dynapower Forged irons to continue that strong performance.

“As production methods get better, the design space for us as engineers and designers increases,” says Wilson Golf Club Innovation Manager Jon Pergande. “We can move weighting; we better understand materials and our analysis tools are getting better, so we can refine all those things.”

Wilson earned its way onto the medal stand alongside TaylorMade and Mizuno since Day One of Player’s Distance testing. Its key technology, however, is one of the more polarizing pieces of visual tech in the game.

Wilson calls them Power Holes.

Love ‘Em or Hate ‘Em

We hear it every time Wilson releases an iron with Power Holes.

“Ugly!”

“Atrocious!!”

“I couldn’t stand looking at those!!!”

Subjective opinion aside, our testing shows that Power Holes work.

“Power Holes provide ball speed by allowing us to have a flexible body behind a stiff face,” explains Pergande. “We developed Power Holes to make sure we have good support for the face and to provide just the right amount of energy return to the ball. That gives us an effectively larger face surface to spread out that forgiveness and ball speed.”

While many player’s distance irons are of hollow-body construction with some sort of filling to improve sound and feel, Wilson’s entries have been a traditional medallion-style structure.

“The shape is important. It’s the first experience someone has with the club,” says Pergande. “Second is the sound and feel which are synonymous with each other. Power Holes certainly help with those as does the medallion structure.”

Medallions on the back of the club aren’t merely decorative. Their primary function is to absorb sound and soften feel. However, since they’re attached to the back of the clubface, they’ll often reduce face flex, which negatively impacts ball speed. Foam or urethane injected into a hollow body serves the same sound-softening purpose but can also negatively affect ball speed.

Power Hole technology takes a different approach. Wilson’s player’s distance irons are a two-piece, solid-body design with a stiff face and flexible body. Power Holes allow the two to interact and let the stiff face move.

“There are a couple of ways to skin a cat,” says Pergande. “You can stiffen up the face and provide some relief and movement around the body. Or you can stiffen up the body and provide that movement and flexibility in the face.”

Evolving Power Holes

Power Holes made their debut in 2016 in the Wilson C200 game-improvement irons.

And I’ll say it right here.

They were butt ugly.

The C200 irons had Power Holes on the sole, the toe and the topline. The holes were, and still are, filled with urethane but, in the original iteration, only 24 percent of the face was connected to the iron body.

“We were just trying to find some face separation based on the tools we had at the time,” says Pergande. “It was a very empirical, very human, design.”

The C300 Forged was Wilson’s first true player’s distance iron. It featured two rows of Power Holes on the sole plus an extra hole on the toe for good measure. Additionally, the 9-iron through gap wedge had no Power Holes, as they weren’t needed with scoring clubs.

The Wilson D7 Forged continued that evolution. The Power Holes were down to two rows but were now included through the pitching wedge. The D9 Forged saw further evolution, with thinner, sleeker Power Holes that were noticeably heel-biased. Also, Power Holes stopped at the 7-iron, recognizing that the scoring clubs didn’t need as much distance technology.

“Our understanding of Power Hole technology has increased through advancements in our simulation software,” Pergande explains. “We’ve been able to manipulate and optimize to get the most out of them.

“If I were to go back and redesign the original C200 irons knowing what we know now, they’d look very different. We’ve learned so much more about how to make the most of them.”

AI and the Evolution of Player’s Distance Irons

While OEM marketing departments love waving the artificial intelligence banner, AI as a design tool is real and it has made your golf clubs better.

“It’s part of our regular process now,” says Pergande. “As our tools get better, we now have hundreds of thousands of opportunities to chase performance. The longer you run it, you start to see results converge on the best solutions. We’re creating maybe 100 years’ worth of iterations in maybe a week.”

In the old days before AI, engineers could focus only on one, maybe two, design features when iterating from one version of a club to the next. They’d then have to build prototypes and then test them to see if they do what the engineers envisioned. AI changes all that.

“We know what the performance is going to be now,” says Pergande. “We have a pretty good idea of ball speed performance and we’re getting better at understanding ball flight characteristics.”

Sound and feel are also predictable through acoustical analysis. Previously, OEMs would never know what a thinner structure like a player’s distance iron would sound like until the prototypes showed up. Now they know before a prototype is even made.

“It’s taken us places we couldn’t go before,” Pergande says. “Before, we’d start out by chasing just ball speed. Now we can chase ball speed, launch angle, spin rate, descent angle and downrange forgiveness at the same time. The computer element allows us to create a family of irons that very specifically target different types of golfers.”

What About Loft-Jacking?

If anything gets the Internet’s keyboard wizards’ undies in a wad, it’s lofts. Look, there are plenty of other things in the world to worry about than the loft on someone else’s 7-iron. But while lofts are a part of the player’s distance equation, it’s disingenuous (not to mention borderline ridiculous) to say OEMs are simply slapping a “7” on a 5-iron and calling it a day.

“Tour players still play what you’d call traditional lofts and they hit it pretty far and maintain their gaps,” Pergande says. “For the rest of us, lofts have spec’d down for game-improvement irons because, for those golfers, distance is the premium. If you can’t hit it very far, capping is less of an issue.”

Strong lofts or “jacked lofts,” if you prefer, date back to the 1950s. Toney Penna’s MacGregor MT irons were compact blades with a ton of low mass. Penna noticed that at standard lofts they flew too high, so he strengthened them to get the flight down. The fact they went farther was a nice side benefit.

Karsten Solheim further refined the low CG concept through perimeter-weighted irons. Again, stronger lofts had the dual effect of bringing ball flight down and making ball flight longer.

Player’s distance irons tend to standardize at around a 30- or 30.5-degree 7-iron although some will wander as low as 29 degrees.

“I think it’s normalized a bit, largely due to launch monitors,” says Pergande. “The player’s world puts a premium on things like spin and descent angle and getting the ball to stop.”

The Evolution of Player’s Distance Irons: What’s Right For You?

 For us gearheads, it’s been a fascinating seven years. Those aging better players, plus emerging players moving on from game-improvement irons, flocked to the player’s distance category. OEMs, meanwhile, pack their best technology into irons even the most discerning eye could appreciate.

Whether by accident or design, Power Hole technology has given Wilson a seat at the player’s distance table.

“The tools we have to evaluate all of our criteria are very different today,” says Pergande. “All of the things we apply to drivers and driver heads we can now apply to irons. We didn’t have those tools 10 years ago.”

Materials have evolved as well. The 8620 carbon steel Wilson uses in its Dynapower Forged face is very different from the 8620 used in the original C300 Forged. Manufacturing techniques have also improved, down to the size and location of the face welds.

Innovation is limited by manufacturing and material technology. Designing a game-changing, revolutionary iron is one thing. Manufacturing it reliably and with available materials is quite another. That’s one reason why 3D metal-jet printing holds such promise. Its ability to manufacture structures that simply could not be made any other way takes the innovative leash off, so to speak.

But, for now, AI and advances in manufacturing and materials give us more choices than ever. Designers know that and are using this new technology to give us more options.

“It’s really a question of how do you play your best game? You start with that fundamental question when you design a club. If you do that well, then the lofts, head sizes, head shapes and looks all tend to fall into place and become very clear.”

This article was written in partnership with Wilson